Why Sydney's Rock Pools Are "Essentially an Australian Religion"

Apart from certain living creatures (aged 13, 11, and 6), the rock pools of Sydney are my favorite things on the planet. As with all great loves, there’s something primal and irrational about it. Visiting once from New York, I returned to

Wylie's Baths, an oceanside pool seemingly carved by surf from the rock below, and was so overcome by its beauty that I kept snapping photos with my phone.

“You’re not from here?” a stranger asked.

“I am,” I replied. “And I still can’t believe it.”

After years of living away, we moved back. The first thing we did was take our made-in-Brooklyn children to Murray Rose Pool and throw them in, rechristening them as Australians. We weren’t truly home till we dipped our feet in that crystalline water at the edge of the continent and felt the sky rise to its rightful place, way higher than in the Northern Hemisphere. It wasn’t just any water we needed: It had to be a Sydney rock pool, a holy place of worship for what’s essentially an Australian religion.

Murray Rose through a library, of all things, then via a sunken garden, under majestic Moreton Bay fig trees. The swimming area is enclosed by a pier/walkway, beyond which pleasure boats bob and the ferries to Manly cruise by. At one end is a cyclone fence with a gate marked private, curtailing access to Seven Shillings Beach, a millionaires’ row. But the gate is never, ever closed, and everyone happily ignores the sign.

The rock pools are a juncture of everyday pleasures and unexpected miracles. At Bondi one weekend, a group clustered at pool’s edge, where a man held in his hands a small horn shark. She’d given birth there and was banging against the rocks; he held her gently underwater until the waves rose high enough for her to swim out.

We’ve since given in completely and enrolled the children at Nippers, the surf lifesaving club at Bronte. Sundays are now spent with other parent volunteers, cheering our children through laps. As the surf crashes into the pool and our six-year-old comes up for air, I realize what is happening here. The kids are learning a lesson as basic as the gospel: To be your best is to be able to look out for others. Then it strikes me what this pool really is—one of the few instances where something man-made dares to improve on nature, and in doing so honors it. Where something free and open to all still feels precious and rare. Holy and secular. Secret, but the most democratic thing in the world. Lifesaving.